Letta govt's destiny to be set in next two weeks

PD leader Renzi hikes pressure on weak administration

(By Paul Virgo)
(ANSA) - Rome, February 7 - The fate of Premier Enrico
Letta's left-right coalition government is set to be decided in
the next two weeks after the new leader of his centre-left
Democratic Party (PD), Matteo Renzi, further racked up the
pressure on the shaky administration.

Renzi, the energetic 39-year-old mayor of Florence, has
been harrying the PD-led government to accelerate on much-needed
reforms since winning a party leadership primary with a
landslide in December.

At a party meeting on Thursday, Renzi recalled that his PD
colleague Letta has set his executive an 18-month deadline to
pass a new election law and other reforms aimed at making Italy
easier to govern and reducing the cost of the country's
political apparatus when it was sworn in last year.

He pointed out that, 10 months into that, little has been
achieved.

He said the PD, the biggest party in parliament, will
decide what its position is with regards to the government at
what is set to be a crunch meeting on February 20.

Letta's government has failed to find stability despite
surviving the defection of Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right
Forza Italia (FI) party in November shortly before the
ex-premier was ejected from parliament following a definitive
tax-fraud conviction.

Letta, who travelled to Sochi Friday for the opening
ceremony of the Winter Olympics, said he was not interested in
"treading water".

There is speculation that Renzi could take over as premier,
even though he has always said he wanted to take the helm of
government after winning elections and not as a result of a pact
between parties like the one that saw Letta come to power after
last year's inconclusive general election.

Another possibility is that Italy will return to the polls
for early elections later this year.

There is also the hypothesis of Letta's administration
being reinforced with a cabinet reshuffled incorporating Renzi
loyalists.

The junior partners in the ruling coalition have been
calling for this to reflect the new political balance of power
after the PD primary and force Renzi to invest in the executive.

A key factor in the outcome of the February 20 meeting will
be the progress in parliament of a bill for a new election law,
based on a deal struck between Renzi and Berlusconi last month.

The bill sets bars for small parties to force them into
alliances and limit their power of veto and a 15% winner's bonus
for a coalition that gets 37% or more to ensure it has a working
majority.

It is set to replace a dysfunctional system that was
declared unconstitutional in December.
Despite raising the pressure on Letta, Renzi reiterated on
Friday that he does not want to scupper the government, but
wants to help it break down the inertia that has long been a
weakness of the Italian political system to pass the
institutional reforms.
"A general election would be in my interests but not in
Italy's," said Renzi, who is Italy's most popular politician
with an approval rating of 55%, according to an Ixe' poll
published Friday.

"We are a step away from a historic reform".

Renzi also has an agreement with Berlusconi to reform
parliament by stripping the Senate of its lawmaking powers to
make it easier to pass legislation and to turn the Upper House
into a chamber made up of 150 city mayors, governors and
civil-society representatives, rather than the current 315
elected members.

The PD leader and the 77-year-old billionaire also have an
agreement to change the Constitution to scrap Italy's provincial
governments, and hand back regional powers to Rome, to save
money.
Industry Minister Flavio Zanonato, a PD member, said Friday
that the government had done well considering "the situation and
its limits", but admitted he was "not optimistic" about its
future.

Another senior PD man, Cesare Damiano, said Letta risked
meeting "the fate of General Custer at Little Bighorn".